


just like him

by interstellarbeams



Series: their journey [3]
Category: Aladdin (2019)
Genre: Children, F/M, Family Fluff, Gen, Married Life, Minor Original Character(s), Original Character(s), Protective Parents, Royalty, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-15 09:37:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20864090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interstellarbeams/pseuds/interstellarbeams
Summary: Aladdin shouldn’t be surprised that his daughter is just like him. He just hoped that she would stop scaring him to death with her reckless behavior.





	just like him

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks Katie for all your help! And Kayla for always being excited about Aladdin and Jasmine with me. 
> 
> I’m not gonna lie, Dad!Aladdin is probably my favorite version of him so I’m gonna keep writing about it. Probably should have called this “the further adventures of najma” but last time she was still a baby so maybe she’s hasn’t had too many adventures. 
> 
> _piyaara_ means beloved in English (decided to go with the Urdu language because that is the language that _Baba_ comes from) 
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated! <3

Aladdin jogged down the corridor, not even giving the servants time to lead the way or to catch up to him as he headed toward the front of the palace and the open indoor garden. The rush of adrenaline was something he would never forget the feel of from his days as a thief, but the fear that gripped him in a chokehold wasn’t fear for his own safety this time. 

He slowed down as he came closer to the door, unwilling to scare his little girl by acting so frantic, but that didn’t stop the hectic pulse of his heartbeat as he walked underneath the archway and spotted her small form. She sat on the rim of the fountain at the center of the garden, seemingly OK, a nurse on each side of her, but when he moved into her line of vision and she caught sight of him, her smooth features crumpled. 

“Prince Consort,” both nurses stood in tandem and curtsied to him, but he wasn’t interested in them at the moment as he stepped around them to get to his daughter.

“Baba,” Najma cried, reaching out her small hands toward him and he bent, reaching to pick her up and wrap his arms around her. Tears dripped down her face and he cradled her against him, mumbling nonsensical sounds as he comforted her.

“What happened?” He turned toward the nurses who had been with her that morning. “Weren’t you supposed to be watching her?”

“Yes, Prince Consort,” the older nurse replied, while the younger one looked frightened, pinching the edges of her veil between two fingers. She wouldn’t look at him even when he tried to catch her eye and he knew she must have been the one slacking in her duties. 

Najma continued to sniffle, her small hands gripping the fabric of his court tunic, but Aladdin also knew that she wasn’t completely innocent in the situation no matter how strongly he wanted to believe differently. Their little star wasn’t one to sit around and twiddle her thumbs when her nurses weren’t looking. She knew when and how to get into trouble. 

Najma was a daddy’s girl and she knew she had her baba wrapped around her little finger, but she was also smart enough to know when she was likely to get in trouble. The tears were partly from fright and more than likely guilt, because she knew she had been doing something that she wasn’t supposed to.

Aladdin felt he was partly at fault. Najma was far too similar to her parents. She was fearless, brave, sometimes even reckless, and any crazy idea that popped into her head … well, she wasn’t above giving it a try. 

He moved to sit down and the nurses stood across from him, their hands clasped in front of them as they watched him with twin gazes. Rajah padded into the room behind them and the younger nurse eyed him warily, but he only rubbed up against Aladdin’s legs, growling affectionately before crossing to lay underneath his favorite mango tree. 

Najma sniffed but wouldn’t look at him, dark hair trailing across her shoulders and curling around her forehead, as he sat her on his lap. She had a nasty scrape on her chin but it had already scabbed over, remnants of her last “great” adventure, when she had climbed up onto one of the large pots in the very same garden and tried to jump off and dangle from one of the sconces, like she had seen Abu do, she had explained. 

“What or who were we trying to be this time?” he asked, pulling her hair back off her shoulders and rubbing her small back with his other hand.

“A leopard,” she replied with a small voice, which he knew could grow to much stronger when she attempted to imitate her mother’s large striped pet. 

“Uh-huh.”

The sharp staccato of heels hitting the floor of the hallway echoed out into the large room and Najma’s eyes grew wide when she realized who was coming. She tried to duck her head against him, but he lifted her up with one hand under her bottom and she wrapped her arm around his neck as Jasmine came into the room, her skirts clutched in both hands. 

Jasmine crossed the room fairly quickly, the skirt of her court dress flaring out behind her as she moved closer. The nurses bobbed twin curtsies and murmured, “Your majesty,” while Rajah lifted his head at his owner’s hasty approach but apparently decided the commotion wasn’t worth investigating because he laid back down with a huff.

“_Devi_, what happened?” She crouched down in front of them, pressing one hand against the fountain to keep her balance while the other hand immediately went to the back of their daughter’s head.

“She was pretending to be a leopard,” Aladdin offered and Jasmine lifted her eyes from Najma to his, her forehead wrinkled with concern. 

“Really?” She stood, then sat down next to him, fingering a rip in their daughter’s dress that he hadn’t even noticed. 

“How were you playing leopard?” She asked Najma, who hid her face from her mother. Aladdin wasn’t surprised, Jasmine’s fiercest looks were intense and even he found it hard to look at her when she sent them his way, but Jasmine wasn’t mad at their daughter, only worried that she could have been hurt. 

“Go on, Najma. You can tell your mama, she’s not upset at you, piyaara. She’s scared, just like your baba, OK?” 

She pulled her head away from his neck and Aladdin brushed her hair from her face. She fiddled with the gold buttons on the front of his tunic for a minute before lifting her eyes to her mother’s. “I climbed the olive twee like I heawd that the leopawds could do and I — I wasn’t twying to do anything bad, I just wanted to see what it was wike to be a cat, that’s all. I didn’t mean to faww out.”

“You fell out of the tree?” Jasmine’s jaw dropped as she glanced up toward the large tree that towered over their heads and Aladdin felt his heartbeat pick up again. Their little girl had fallen out of a tree onto the hard tiled surface of the indoor garden. They were lucky she hadn’t been hurt. 

Jasmine turned on the fountain edge, pinning the two nurses with a regal and furious glare. “Why weren’t you doing your jobs and watching the princess?”

The sun broke out from behind a cloud just then, shining off of Jasmine’s jeweled tiara and lighting her yellow and gold dress, like the very same sun’s rays glowed from inside her.

“Mama wooks wike an angel,” Najma whispered in his ear as the sultan stood to confront the two women who had been in charge of watching the young princess. Aladdin had never seen an angel, but he had to agree, perhaps an avenging angel, but a beautiful angel nonetheless. 

“Did you hurt yourself?” Aladdin asked, running his hands down his daughter’s arms, as Jasmine essentially interrogated Najma’s nurses. 

“I don’t think so,” she lisped, poking her finger into the rip in her dress like her mama had done.

“Look at me.”

“Yes, baba,” she replied, lifting her big brown eyes to focus on his.

“You can’t be climbing trees. You could get hurt, you could break a bone … have you ever broken a bone?”

“No, baba.” 

“I know you haven’t and we don’t want you to. It hurts, sometimes the doctor has to come and put it back where it belongs, like a misplaced book on mama's bookshelves. You don’t want that, do you?”

She shook her head no, adamantly, eyes big and wide, one finger poking at her lip.

“I’m sorry, piyaara. I don’t want to scare you more than you already have been, but if something happened to you and I couldn’t fix it, I would be devastated. Do you know what that means?”

She shook her head no again and he pulled her close, breathing in the sweetness of her sunshine-warmed hair. 

“It’s like when … your favorite doll got left on the stairs and one of mama’s guards stepped on it, shattering the porcelain, that’s what devastated means… like your baba’s heart all in little pieces.”

“I’m sowwy, baba,” she spoke, her breath warm against his neck and he hugged her fiercely before pressing a bunch of kisses to the side of her head and neck until she giggled.

“Baba, stawp!” she demanded, trying to pull away and he let her, the wide smile that stretched at his cheeks making his face hurt despite her attempts to get away from his smothering kisses.

“It will _not_ happen again,” Jasmine’s stern voice echoed towards them and Aladdin sympathized with the nursemaids, but he knew that Jasmine wouldn’t let any lapses like that happen again, especially when it involved their children’s safety.

“What have you been telling her?” Jasmine asked when she moved back to his side. Aladdin knew that tone of voice, so he set Najma down and told her to run off and play, _safely_, with Abu and Rajah.

Jasmine’s glare, which had been directed toward the nurses only moments ago, was now directed toward him. He had a feeling her love for him softened it a little bit, but he was still in trouble.

“Well, I may have told her she could be anything she wanted and then told her the story of that leopard we saw when we were in India.”

Jasmine sighed, pressing one hand to her forehead and the other to her side as she turned away from him. He knew she had every reason to be upset, but how was he to know their daughter would attempt to play a leopard simply because he told her a story.

“She gets this from you,” she finally spoke, crossing her arms as she moved back toward him.

“The adventurous side, yes, I agree, but the fearlessness, that’s all you.” Aladdin smiled at her crookedly, which she attempted to ignore by picking up the cushion off the edge of the fountain and dusting it off before placing it back in its spot.

She lifted her head, earrings dangling, and he marveled at her beauty, her protectiveness reminding him of a fierce lioness willing to fight to protect her young. 

“Fearlessness must run in the blood. I remember a time when you took a certain princess on a magic carpet ride through the streets of Agrabah with a giant parrot in pursuit.”

“How was I to know Jafar could turn Iago into a giant, deranged pursuant? Plus, you were the one who jumped off the balcony onto Carpet, not me.” He shrugged, knowing that his nonchalance riled her like nothing else.

Jasmine stepped closer and he did the same, until they were basically breathing the same air. 

“I’m sorry, but I really didn’t want to marry a power hungry sorcerer … I had other plans in mind. I think I showed quite a bit of trust in you there, _after_ you lied to me about being a prince.”

“Only to get close to you and I’m glad you didn’t marry a sorcerer,” he spoke softly, brushing a strand of hair back over her shoulder as he stared into her bold eyes, “even if I do get the blame for giving our daughter ideas.” 

“They are _your_ stories.”

“You take me on those trips so who’s fault is it, really?” he teased and he watched as her nose crinkled adorably when she couldn’t think of another comeback.

Jasmine lifted a hand to his cheek, the slim fingers of her other hand delving into the hair at the back of his neck as she pulled him closer. It was definitely not the first time they had shared a kiss, but Aladdin felt the same anticipation burn in his belly as if he was standing on a magic carpet suspended next to her balcony, feeling the press of her soft lips for the first time. 

Najma’s laughter and Abu’s answering chatter interrupted them and they pulled away. It was then followed by another little voice that squealed and crowed like a peacock. Another nurse stepped through the archway and made her way over to them before handing the baby in her arms off to Jasmine who waited impatiently.

“There he is, my handsome one,” she spoke, her voice pitched high as she kissed the toddler on his dimpled cheek. He grabbed handfuls of her hair with damp fingers, but she just laughed and bounced him, the sweetest smile lifting her lips as Aladdin looked on. 

“And what are you going to tell _him_? That he can be a giraffe if he wants to?” she asked, looking over their son’s shoulder at him with a playful challenge in her eyes. 

“Maybe, and I might tell _her,_” Aladdin accepted the warm, weighty bundle that the second nurse offered him, “that she can be a sultan or a mother, a spice merchant or a ship’s captain, if that’s what she wants, because she can be anything she puts her mind to, plus she’s stubborn just like her mother.”

“More like stubborn like her father,” Jasmine rolled her eyes, bringing Naadir closer to peer down at the small baby girl who lay wrapped in a soft blanket. 

“What’s _stubbown_?” Najma asked as she came toward them, Abu resting on her shoulder with his tail wrapped around her neck while Rajah trailed after them, slowly, on old legs.

Aladdin and Jasmine glanced at each other, exchanging perplexed looks before they both burst into laughter.


End file.
